Magento Releases 2.2

Magento 2.2 is now closed to new as they prepare it for release. The Release Candidate [or beta version] is open for community and partner feedback and is rapidly approaching production quality. As soon as the full version of Magento 2.2 is available (expected in the next few weeks), you’ll have a wide array of new features and functionality to look forward to.

“The most anticipated set of features that Magento Commerce 2.2 will bring revolve around B2B functionality,” said Kornchai, a Senior Magento Developer at EYStudios. “2.2 will allow the ability to create and manage companies, generate shared catalogs, and create unique company pricing.”

Customers will have the ability to request a quote directly from the shopping cart. This feature submits the contents of the customers cart to the merchant for a quote in one step. Order comments and a field for file uploads are also supported by this functionality. There will be an additional feature that allows for negotiation between the customer and merchant for pricing on both products and shipping.

The Quick Order Tool that 2.2 offers will allow customers to enter product SKUs or bulk upload a CSV of SKUs to quickly purchase large quantities of product. Similarly, 2.2’s Requisition List will keep track of quantity of products ordered and remembers commonly purchased items.

Magento Commerce 2.2’s Payment on Account feature lets merchants extend a credit limit to customers. These limits can be set per website, per customer, or per company. All credit information can be tracked in the customer’s account dashboard or in the Magento admin panel. This feature also allows for the entering of PO numbers as payment.

Custom Catalogs can restrict which customers can see which products and categories. Products can be restricted from view in both search and regular site navigation. Catalogs are created for the store and then can be applied to companies. This gives the merchant the ability to have multiple companies sharing the same catalog. Price lists are also offered as an alternative to tiered pricing and are more granular in nature.

In addition to the new B2B offerings, Magento has made some remarkable improvements to their reporting by introducing Magento Business Intelligence. The improved reporting applies to products, orders, and customers. Magento BI will allow you to track store conversions, product conversions, traffic, and abandoned carts.

Magento 2.2 will offer Signifyd fully integrated, out of the box. Signifyd offers chargeback protection and fraud screening for merchants and supports all payment methods and many countries. Merchants will still need the Signifyd service which is run through a separate admin.

Charles Estes, Lead Developer at EYStudios, explained that the developer updates released with Magento 2.2 will be “game changing.”

“The APIs released will make for faster upgrades, the mass asynchronous operations will allow for easier development of long running processes, and the pipeline deployment will significantly reduce downtime while deploying static content .”

This means you’ll get updates to your site more efficiently and your admin panel will not be affected by these processes.

EYStudios is excited for the release of Magento 2.2 and looks forward to upgrading merchants’ stores.